ECAs
Walking along one corridor today after school this week I saw some amazing things. I saw the Nhan Chinh School for the Deaf students interacting with our students through sign language. Through the work of our community support officer, Thao Le, and Mr Hennigan, the Head of EAL, our students have been trying to learn sign language over the last few weeks with the help of a deaf teacher, and today we were able to welcome our new friends from Nhan Chinh. There was so much fun and excitement as the two groups of students met, played and communicated with each other.
Along the same corridor, I met students who were trying to solve a problem, in a leadership scenario. They are part of the Student Leadership ECA and were exploring the notions of vision and action, through problem solving. Next door in the adjacent room, we had Mr Dale and his Fighting Fit club getting students to increase their fitness and confidence with punch bags and lots of laughter.
And then I had the pleasure of watching the girls’ basketball team play against BIS next door in the gym. Last year, we had about 7 girls who attended training, and this year, through the efforts of Ms Smith, Head of PE, we have about 20. Their commitment to training has really paid off as they played some beautiful basketball against much taller opponents, and were unlucky to only draw the game. The boys played BIS in the Primary Sports Hall and won well. Congratulations to all the players and thanks to Ms Smith and Mr Leak for being their coaches.
In addition to that, I saw the trumpet ECA, normally led by Mr Dawson, being given a masterclass from our Juilliard visitor and curriculum specialist, Paul Murphy. We have been very lucky to have him come and visit us over the last two days, to see how our own Music Programme is going in collaboration with Juilliard, and to work with our staff and students.
So it was a very busy, but exciting, corridor!
Interim reports
Next week, we will be releasing the students’ first interim report of the year. This will detail how your child has been progressing over the first half term. The reports will be sent home on Friday and I hope you have a chance to talk with your child about them.
Enrichment Day 1
This week you should have received an e mail detailing our first Enrichment Day of the year, which will be taking place on Monday 16th October. We are welcoming Jonathan Taylor, an online safety expert from the UK, who will be talking to all the students on the day. As a result of his visit, we have developed the theme of wellbeing for the whole day, and students will be given wider learning experiences to enable them to develop their physical, social and online wellbeing. I will report on this in next week’s article.
World Scholar's Cup Visit
I have written before that we have two teams that have reached the final of the World Scholar’s Cup, to be hosted at Yale University in the USA. They will be competing in this event in November. As a prelude to that, we had the current World Scholar of the Year, Chauncey Lo, come into school and speak with our students. It gave them a terrific insight into what it takes to be a World Scholar, and we thank him for taking the time to visit. My thanks to Ms Bower for organising this visit.
I hope you all have a great week ahead.
Nick Lee
